


faceted

by glundergun (cleardishwashers)



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 14:11:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21459352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleardishwashers/pseuds/glundergun
Summary: the many birthdays of dee reynoldshappy birthday allie!! ilysm <333
Relationships: Charlie Kelly & Dee Reynolds, Dee Reynolds & Dennis Reynolds, Mac McDonald & Dee Reynolds, Mac McDonald/Dennis Reynolds
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	faceted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).

Dee Reynolds is going to be an actress. That’s what Dr. Meyers said, and that’s what’s going to happen. Dee goes to every audition she can find, lying about her age and lying about her sizes and lying about her experience, and she books nothing. It’s fine. She’s only seventeen; she has time. Once she gets out of the back brace, she’ll be a star.

Eighteen rolls around and she and Dennis trade the same cigarette back and forth once the pack runs dry, because they’d given one to Mac and that’d made the number of cigs left uneven. Dee hadn’t wanted to see Mac— hadn’t wanted to see anyone, really, but it’s Dennis’s birthday too, and that had been the card he’d played when she protested. Mac had left after a single drink anyway, probably to go bail his dad out of jail or suck someone off or something. Dee pretends not to notice the way Mac and her brother look at each other, because she’s sick of talking about them. It’s her birthday; she shouldn’t have to talk about Dennis and his stupid gay best friend. They sit in silence, and when the sun sets they break out a bottle of vodka, the same as they’d done since they were thirteen and Barbara had finally let them drink hard alcohol. The metal cage holds her upright, even as Dennis slouches onto her shoulder and rambles semi-drunkenly about something Mac did the other day. She wonders if Charlie would’ve been better company. At least Charlie isn’t gay for Mac. She stubs the cigarette out against the wooden floor, jamming the end down with more force than necessary, and wonders if this is the year that Dad will remember her birthday.

Nineteen is nothing special— they’re home for the summer, and Dennis throws a birthday party and then disappears to go fuck Mac or something. Dee gives Adriano an uninspired handjob, and he throws some comment her way that she forgets the second it enters her brain. She finds Charlie huffing glue in one of the bathtubs and holds out her hand. He hands it over without protest. She inhales deeply, the scent of the glue making her nose wrinkle like the paper of the bag, and then she joins him in the bathtub. The metal brace makes a horrendous noise as it screeches against the porcelain, but Charlie ignores it. Somehow, she ends up passed out in Charlie Kelly’s lap, and the next morning her entire spinal column feels like it’s been set on fire, but he doesn’t mention it.

Twenty is a good birthday. Twenty is good, because in a month she’ll have the back brace off. Dennis tells her that she’ll always be the Aluminum Monster, but she already knows that, and it’ll make for interesting trivia once she’s an actress. She still hasn’t booked a part, but she’s still got time. Dennis disappears all day and comes back with completely different clothes on, but in the spirit of siblinghood, Dee doesn’t mention it.

Twenty-one is a lot of her first times. First birthday in over a decade without the back brace, first time being legally able to drink, first time she can go to a bar on her birthday and get drunk and pick up a guy without worrying about the cops. The guy is a decent enough lay, but he insists on jackrabbiting as they start up, and when they’re done he falls flat on her chest and squishes her. She waits for him to leave. He passes out instead. So she pulls on a hoodie and shorts and ventures downstairs for either water or alcohol— she’s not picky. What she finds is Ronnie the Rat himself, looking like a deer in headlights.  _ I’m not— there’s an explanation, _ he stutters out, and she responds with an eye roll as she elbows him out of the way of the fridge. She may be the Aluminum Monster, she may be the girl who still hasn’t booked a role, she may be the first and therefore the worst, but she’s not as pathetic as Mac standing in her kitchen making excuses while dressed in solely boxers. She lets him bluster for a few minutes, and then he finally says,  _ I’m not gay, _ and she says  _ Good for you _ and eats her Cocoa Puffs. She wonders if Dennis even eats the stuff anymore, even though he was the one who started eating them first, back when they were six. She never sees him eat anything other than health shit anymore. Maybe she should switch to his diet— actresses need to be thin. But she’s still young, and she’s got a good metabolism, and everybody knows that actresses only  _ need _ to start controlling their eating at age twenty-five.

She has her own place by age twenty-five, because she’s an independent woman who can work at a bar while waiting for her big break. She splurges on a big cake and eats it all by herself and pretends not to notice Mac and Dennis disappearing into the back room and not coming out. She thinks about Hollywood, and her faith— already propped up on flimsy wooden matchsticks— wavers.

By thirty, the matchsticks have caught fire and all she can do is watch as her skin sags and her hair thins and her wrinkles grow and all her hopes start to come caving in. Frank is back in their lives this time, like he didn’t fuck them up enough the first time around. She buys an even bigger cake this year and thinks that Dennis would probably try and puke it up when he was done eating, but she isn’t Dennis. She’s not a fucking coward like him— she hasn’t stayed closeted all her goddamn life, she’s banged who she wants whenever she wants to and never been ashamed of it, not like him and Mac, always sneaking around and pretending like nobody notices. God, Dee wants to smack the life out of them. She wants to go back in time and tell her past self to get out, to run before it’s too late.

Thirty-four is the first birthday since her seventeenth where Mac and Dennis aren’t fucking. Something between them soured ever since she told them about their weird homoerotic codependence, and while she wishes she didn’t regret it, they’ve been much more unbearable ever since, so she really has no choice. She takes her cake to the office and locks herself in, and when Charlie comes wriggling out of the vent, she just offers him a piece. He eats it with his bare hands. Goddamn animal.

Forty sneaks up on her. She denies it, pushes it down, and then she sees Dennis re-dying his hair and it punches her in the gut. She’s  _ old. _ She’s an old crone. She might be able to get the roles of mothers and aunts and crazy cat ladies now. Dennis is an idiot. He’s not taking advantage of everything that ageing has to offer like she is, and that’s what’s always been wrong with him. He doesn’t know how to manipulate situations to the full extent, and she does. Out of adversity comes opportunity, and the Golden Goddess was raised on adversity.

When she turns forty-one, she considers calling Dennis. She wonders if he even remembers that it’s their birthday, or if he’s just become another bland bitch typical of North Dakota. She looks down onto the floor, where Mac is sprawled amidst bottles of Jack, clutching his threadbare pillow to his chest like it’s something precious. She’s got half a mind to wake him up, force him to celebrate her piece-of-shit brother being gone. Instead, she stares up at the ceiling and wishes she could be eighteen again, passing the last cigarette back over to her twin and sharing a smile— a real one, not the knife-sharp ones they wore around Frank and Barbara— with him like it was the most hallowed secret in the world.


End file.
